The Flesh Is Not Weak
By
Fred L. Taulbee Jr.
Copyright 2011 Fred L. Taulbee Jr.
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Read the horror novel House of the Matriarch available on Smashwords.com.
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She sat in a chair by her shack, gnarled fingers like small brown roots sticking out of a towel wrapped around her hands to keep them warm, eyes on one of the two paths that led to her shack, one trodden so much it was mud, the other a path of short grass weaving through pine and birch trees. Soon the girl would come running along the well-traveled trail, shoes crunching down on the frozen mud and cracking the ice on tiny puddles. It was going to be a very cold and wet winter, just like last year.
She heard the girl coming from the wrong path, her shoes crunching the frosted crabgrass instead of the frozen mud. The old lady stood, angry and worried. She unwrapped the blanket from her hands and whipped it onto the chair. The girl stopped in front of her, a basket in her arms.
"Didn't I tell you not to come that away?"
"Yes, ma'am," the girl said panting. "But it's shorter."
"Your life gonna be shorter if you do it again. I told you not to come that away for a reason. You know who lives down there?"
"No, ma'am," the girl said, suddenly disappointed.
"Dodd."
The girl's disappointed expression had been nothing compared to the one of fear. She continued her panting, now scared.
"You know what Dodd'll do to you, right?"
"I'm sorry Miss Malady. I didn't think he was real."
She winced at her name. She had been called by another name when she was a slave in North Carolina, but she never cared for it. Then, long after she had been freed and found her way to Louisiana, she met her husband Kyle who in his most endearing moments, called her "My Lady," but he had an accent she thought he had gotten either from his tribe in Africa or from Europe, though she always thought he had been lying about going to Europe. The people who heard him say "My Lady" with his strange accent thought he called her "Malady" and the name stuck. She never liked that name either, but she got more customers because of it.
"Oh, yes. Dodd's real. Been in these here woods since the war, the war he still fights in his head."
The girl recovered from her fear long enough to grab something from the basket that was wrapped in a dishtowel. Malady looked back the way she had come. Dodd wasn't there. Thank God.
"My daddy said sorry it took so long. We had to go to Alek twice in a month to get it from a man who bakes bread up there, once to order it and once to pick it up."
“And you got the cheapest kind?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“And your daddy bought it hisself. He didn’t get anybody else to buy it for him?”
“No ma’am.”
Malady unwrapped it and smelled it. She didn't know what rye grain was supposed to smell like, but it smelled good, exotic to her. She ran a finger through the grain. Many of the grains had purple blotches as if they were moldy. She smiled when she noticed this. That was as much a part of the goopher mixture as everything else.
"It'll do, child. Tell your daddy that woman should be coming round in about a week, as long as he did what I said to do."
"I made sure he did. He likes her so much. And he misses Momma so much."
"Did he pray too?"
"He said he weren't gonna, but I heard him late at night talking to God."
"Good. Good. Now you run along the other way and be sure to tell people Miss Malady is working her roots again, but be sure to tell them it'll only be for good and not evil. Tell them I found God, though he was hardly the one lost."
"Yes, ma'am."
"Come here."
Malady bent down. The girl hugged her neck, then ran off down the other trail. The old lady watched for a long time after the girl had disappeared beyond the trail.
She had brought two boys and a daughter into this world, all of them by her Master's boy. She and the boy had been the same age, both ripe with youth. She was young and supple back then, not the raisin she had turned into as an old woman. She had thought he would free her.
When her children began looking more and more like the Master's son, they were sold at auction. After her second boy turned twelve and was sold, she realized what was happening, so when it was finally her daughter Kitty's turn to be taken from her, Malady told her all the conjures she could remember, though tradition bade she do it on her deathbed. She knew she would never see her again. She only wished she could have passed along the conjures her husband Kyle had taught her years later.
"What ya got there, Miss Malady," came a crackly voice. "You back to your old evil ways?"
Dodd stood there. She had smelt him before she heard or saw him. His former gray confederate uniform hung from his limbs in black-encrusted tatters. He wore several coats, probably from his victims, she thought. His face was a sunken mass. Hair grew wildly from his head and face, so much so that the only skin she could see was his nose, a bit of his cheeks near his nose and a bit of his forehead over his brows. His mouth was filled with a run down picket fence of yellow and blackened teeth. Bits of food stuck between the few still close together.
It took all her courage not to shiver at the sight of him. She wanted to ask him what evil he had been up to himself, but held her tongue. She made sure the dishtowel covered the grain.
"I remember the good old days when you had customers galore and you'd get food all the time and invite me up."
"I ain't got no food today."
"Well, if you did I know you'd offer me some."
"Maybe those times is coming back. I'd rather you eat real food. The kind God meant ya to eat. Maybe in a few weeks I'll have a little hen we can cook up." She forced a half-toothless smile of her own. "You'll know when I'm cooking. You always did know."
"Oh, it always smelt good."
She wanted to go inside, but there was still something she had to do.